The tenuous relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East became a topic of interest on campus this week.
Several faculty met in Holden Auditorium on Tuesday night to discuss this issue. The group consisted of five professors spanning across the departments of political science, economics, international studies and history.
The goal of the meeting was to show how the Middle East "emerged in the world after World War I" said Bettina Koch, a professor of political science and the moderator of the conversation.
"The idea is to have a conversation," Koch said, stressing the importance of the crowd's participation in the event.
Carmen Gitre, a professor of history and the first of the speakers, discussed the geographical organization of the Middle East.
Gitre displayed a variety of maps, including political maps from the Cold War and maps showing the locations of where people tweet the most and the least in the region.
Gitre continued her presentation by talking about many of the movements that arose later in the century that were centered around regaining land for the native people of the Middle East.
"What we see after World War I is the emergence of nationalist movements that basically brought all sorts of people demanding that the British and French leave," Gitre said.
Gitre pointed out that many of the movements of the time had no religious affiliation and were mainly focused on the autonomy of the country.
"These movements were largely, but not [totally], secular movements," Gitre said. "But the big thing was that they were nationalist movements."
After profiling many of the struggles in the Arab uprisings, Ioannis Stivachtis, a professor of political science and international studies, gave a speech about the state of Middle East following the Cold War.
Stivachtis detailed three main points about the state of the region at that time.
They began with the idea that after the Cold War, the U.S. was in sole dominance of the region and in world politics. Secondly, he stated that Middle Eastern countries had much more autonomy from world influence and that the end of the Cold War led to a new understanding of security between countries in the region.
Stivachtis concluded by saying that the United States was responsible for much of the blame for today's conflict because of how they treated the region.
"No American president after the Cold War was able to convince the American public that what is to be preserved in terms of international security is the system as a whole," Stivachtis said. "The United States can be blamed for everything, especially now that Russia is back."
Next, Djavid Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics, spoke about the youth element in the region.
Isfahani began saying that the reason for much of the conflict with youth today is due to what he called "Nasser's promise." This was a promise that former President Gamal Abdel Nasser made to the Egyptian youth that every person who graduated from college would receive a government job.
Isfahani said that this conflict between upper and lower class youth and their inability to retain jobs created high amounts of tension in the region.
Finally, Daniel Breslau, a professor of science and technology, spoke about "forgetting Palestine."
Breslau's main focus was to detail the U.S. policy concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, which like the U.S. policy in other areas in the Middle East, is a contradictory policy and has internal tensions," Breslau said.
Breslau summarized the intensely deep conflict by saying that the problem with the U.S. relationship with Israel is that they have a "special relationship." This relationship, Breslau said, boils down to the U.S. not punishing Israel for wrong acts because of the vested interest the U.S. has for Israel's success.
"Through this special relationship with Israel, in which the relationship is not conditioned on anything Israel does, the U.S. ends up undermining its quest to have stability in the region [and] to have the good will of the Arab and Islamic people in the Middle East," Breslau said.
The talk was sponsored by several organizations including, but not limited to, the Middle East Working Group, the department of political science and the department of international studies.